Microsoft Word Comes of Age

News Analysis: Microsoft's ubiquitous word processing program celebrates its 18th birthday in 2007, having successfully wended its way through the growing pains of childhood and challenges of adolescence.

Microsoft's ubiquitous word processing program, Microsoft Word, celebrates its 18th birthday in 2007, having successfully wended its way through the growing pains of childhood and challenges of adolescence.

Word essentially started as a product known as "Bravo," which was brought to Microsoft in 1981 by Charles Simonyi,who is regarded by many as the father of Word, from Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.

Microsoft's official Word development team was given the green light in 1982, and the first version was released in 1983 featuring the "WYSIWYG" (What You See Is What You Get) design philosophy, a Microsoft spokesperson told eWEEK.

But the application was not officially released as Word for Windows until 1989, which is the date Microsoft regards as its birthday.

Microsoft Word grew up in a word-processing market that had more than 300 different titles on multiple platforms, but it was among the earliest applications to appear on OS/2 and Apple's Macintosh computers, in addition to versions for MS-DOS, she said.

Early programs such as Electric Pencil gave way to WordStar, WordPerfect and other brands, but Word's official release in 1989 was two years ahead of the delivery of WordStar and WordPerfect.